/afaqs/media/media_files/2025/02/04/rgod1vIbO3XSe25byhTD.jpg)
Shark Tank India, a business reality show that debuted in 2021, features entrepreneurs pitching their business ideas to a panel of investors, known as ‘sharks', who determine whether or not to invest in their ventures.
Beyond funding, the show provides startups with valuable media exposure, enhancing brand credibility and encouraging potential customers to explore and try their products or services.
The show provides startups with a powerful marketing opportunity, allowing young brands to reach a global audience that would be difficult to accomplish through traditional advertising.
Read more: Beyond investments, does Shark Tank double up as an advertising medium for its pitchers?
Until the last season, brands featured on the show were given a 15-minute prime-time slot on national television—an opportunity that many couldn’t afford through traditional TV commercials owing to budget constraints.
However, Shark Tank India Season 4 has shifted to a digital-only format, with new episodes running Monday through Friday at 8 pm IST on Sony LIV.
The new episodes are available exclusively to subscribers, with plans ranging from Rs 299 to Rs 999 per month or year.
With this move, Sony Pictures Television hopes to drive appointment viewing on OTT—a challenge even Netflix faced while attempting to reintroduce scheduled viewing habits with The Great Indian Kapil Show.
According to a GroupM report from last year, India had 217 million TV households, while the Ormax OTT Audience Report 2024 estimates the Indian OTT universe at 547.3 million users.
While TV data reflects households, OTT data represents individual users, indicating a shift in content consumption patterns.
For Shark Tank India, driving subscriptions to Sony LIV comes with several challenges, including pricing concerns, market saturation, and piracy issues.
BeastLife co-founder and influencer Gaurav Taneja, aka Flying Beast, appeared on the show but saw a sharp drop in website traffic after his pitch aired.
While BeastLife's launch day saw an impressive 238K visitors, that number plummeted considerably to just 22K after the episode.
Taneja questioned the show's effectiveness as a marketing platform, attributing the decline to three key factors: a possible dip in the show's popularity, delayed traction from episodes becoming freely available on YouTube, and the absence of traditional TV broadcasts this season.
Read more: Gaurav Taneja questions Shark Tank's impact after dismal traffic numbers
Let’s evaluate whether shifting Shark Tank India to an OTT-only platform was a good decision.
After appearing on the show, Tikitoro, a skincare and haircare brand for children and teens, saw a notable surge in engagement. Within three days of the episode's premiere, new order conversions jumped by 60%, reach by 50%, and engagements by 171%.
Prasanna Vasanadu, the brand’s founder, believes that airing on television would have generated an even greater immediate impact, as not everyone has an OTT subscription.
“Once an episode is uploaded on YouTube, it becomes accessible to the masses, which will help in the long run,” she says.
Airing on TV would have had generated an even greater immediate impact, as not everyone has an OTT subscription.
- Prasanna Vasanadu, Tikitoro
Beyond Snacks, a Kerala chips brand that rose to prominence after playing on Shark Tank India's inaugural season attributed much of its success to the show. Co-founder Manas Madhu says, “Without Shark Tank, we wouldn’t have reached even a quarter of the scale we are at today.”
In the past year, the brand earned Rs 30 crore in revenue. “The kind of visibility Shark Tank provided would have cost us crores in advertising, but instead, we got free publicity,” he argues.
Madhu recognises that, while the transition to OTT may have a minor impact on the show's reach, it still has a sizable audience. However, he notes that uploading his pitch to YouTube did not result in a large boost in sales.
/afaqs/media/media_files/2025/02/04/obfJPC8fIYPBJOJr7En8.jpg)
Madhav Kasturia, the founder and CEO of Zippee (a logistics platform), highlighted on LinkedIn that while SonyLIV has roughly 30 million paid subscribers, Sony's television network reaches approximately 700 million viewers.
He also pointed out that the SonyLIV app runs over eight ads per episode, which could lead to viewer frustration.
Speaking to us, Kasturia explained that in the past three seasons, Shark Tank India had been accessible across multiple channels, effectively serving as a soft launch platform for brands and driving significant traffic. "With this season, the audience size has declined," he notes.
He also revealed that Sony is in talks to air the show midyear.
With this season, the audience size has declined.
- Madhav Kasturia, Zippee
The experience was different for Nooe, a brand offering stylish and functional products for home and office use. After appearing on Shark Tank India, the brand saw a 2,000% surge in website traffic and a 7x increase in sales volume.
Piyush Suri, the co-founder, believes that the show's paywall worked in their favour, as it ensured visibility among an audience with purchasing power.
"For our brand, the audience is more digital than television-driven. Also, our products are not impulse buys in the Rs 400-500 range—customers take time to decide," he explains.
The brand’s products generally range from around Rs 1,599 to Rs 13,499.
/afaqs/media/media_files/2025/02/04/pbygphH1CRvsSxQvqODB.jpg)
Co-founder Neetica Pande adds that reaching a more filtered audience results in higher-quality data collection.
Only time will tell whether Shark Tank India's shift to an OTT-exclusive format proves to be a successful move for the network.